Scooby-Doo and The Phantom Too

With an eye towards the 2010 Oscar season, this past weekend my lovely wife and I met up with Matthew in Las Vegas. As with all trips to Sin City, this trip was purely for business purposes and I plan to flamboyantly display all expenses on my 1040 come February. I went to Vegas to personally put a charge into Matthew to get him to watch and review more movies for the eye-gasm pleasure of all of this blog’s readers. I think the meetings went well and I came away with a solid (non-committal) promise that Matthew would watch and dictate his thoughts to many movies in 2010. Stay tuned!

While in Las Vegas, Matthew, my wife and I went to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Venetian. Since Matthew and I have already broken so many barriers with this blog, I am going to keep breaking barriers by posting the first review of a musical (or was it an Opera?).

My best guess is that when Gaston Leroux was writing The Phantom of the Opera (later set to music by Ken Hill and then stolen by Andy Webber) he probably had Scooby-Doo and the Gang in mind. Here are the characters:

Raoul – Fred Jones
Christine Daae – Daphne Jones
Meg Giry – Velma Dinkley
Richard (Opera Owner) – Scooby-Doo
Moncharmin (Opera Owner) – Shaggy Rogers
Phantom – Each episodes bad guy

At one point during the production, the Phantom was paddling down a river with Christine Daae (Daphne) and I honestly was hoping that they were paddling to the island where Scooby got stranded with the Globetrotters. How cool would that have been? How could the Phantom have kept that menacing look on his half face if he had seen the hilarious antics and ball handling expertise of the ‘Trotters? Personally, when I am thinking about kidnapping someone so that I can give them singing lessons and show them some Doug Henning style magic tricks I always remind myself about the Globetrotters. It really does work nine out of ten times…

Needless to say, the Phantom did not paddle Daphne to that island. Instead he took her to his Phantom-pad with stunning 360 degree views of the sewer and a metal fence that resembled the steel cage from Wrestle Mania 2. Don’t act like you are too cool to remember Wrestle Mania 2...That steel-cage match between King Kong Bundy and Hulk Hogan was a classic.

But once the Phantom got Daphne to his pad I am not exactly clear as to what his plans were. He went to all the trouble to send her notes and sing her songs but he couldn’t even fix up his apartment? Once he showed Daphne that weird magic trick where another gal fell out of the mirror, he put her in bed in the same boat they paddled over in. And, to make matters worse, it was a twin bed. Even if this plan really swept Daphne off her feet did he really plan to have them enjoy their sewer-coast apartment and share a twin bed in a row boat?

At the beginning of the production when Richard (Scooby) and Moncharmin (Shaggy) took over as owners of the Opera House they were told that the Phantom was paid a monthly salary of 20K. I don’t care what the currency is, that is a lot of cheese and the Phantom should have used the money to rent a nice apartment away from the Opera House with room for a queen sized bed and indoor plumbing. When Daphne comes home from a long day of singing her thoughts and wearing corsets she doesn’t want to walk down ten flights of dark stairs and then take a row boat across the sewer to a home that is furnished with a trick mirror, twin bed/row boat and an organ (how was the Phantom powering that thing?). And wouldn’t the Phantom prefer to not to live where he haunts? At some point he is going to be walking around in his underwear and half-mask and someone is going to stumble across him and it will just be embarrassing for everyone. You only get one chance to be a Phantom. Once Fred pulls that mask off the villain he is just “old man Riley” who “would have gotten away with it” if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

The one character that was not very well developed was Meg Giry (Velma). Traditionally, Velma is the smart one who follows the clues and solves the mystery. I am guessing that Gaston Leroux didn’t want to face any lawsuits from Hanna-Barbera so he made this character just different enough to cloud the waters. Half way through the show, Velma started to figure things out and ask a few questions but in the end most of the glory went to Raoul (Fred).

Fred has always had a thing for Daphne so that outcome was not surprising. What was surprising was that he did not have an Ascot on at any point in the show. Plus, for what ever reason towards the end of the show he got locked in a cage and decided that he would feel more comfortable in the cage if he unbuttoned the top six buttons of his shirt. Seeing Fred locked in that cage with his luscious V of gleaming chest pubes made the ladies swoon and I think I heard Tom Jones say “damn it, that was my idea!”

Not to give away all of the details of the show, but in the end things worked out (to a degree). The direction of the mystery turns eerily at the end when Daphne, faced with the choices of (a) marry the Phantom and live in the aforementioned apartment or (b) not marry the Phantom and let Fred die with his chest hanging out in the cage, chose to instead make out with the Phantom. The eerie part was not the making out, it was the pulling away, thinking about what she had done and then diving back in for some more making out (It should be noted that if we were not seated in the second row with the other high rollers I would have shouted out “touch her boob”).

Despite all of the odds, the double make out session did work and Daphne was able to escape with Fred and ride off into the sunset in the Mystery Machine with the rest of the Gang. My lasting impression of the end of the show was that Fred will always look at Daphne and think not about the first make out session, but about that second helping. At some point, Daphne’s looks will go (along with her waist line) and Fred will be stuck as Assistant Manager at the Haberdashery and he will take out all of his frustrations on that Phantom kiss.

Maybe that could be the plot for Phantom of the Opera 2. Here are a few lines from the theme song:

Christine Daae where are you
I’ve got some Phantom questions for you now
Christine Daae we need some help from you now
Come on Christine I see you
Pretending you didn’t go in for seconds
You’re not fooling me because I can see
Your love for the Phantom still beckons

Warren